


Ghosts of Christmas, Past and Present

by seimaisin



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Christmas, F/M, Holidays
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-12-24
Updated: 2003-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-17 00:40:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/171034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seimaisin/pseuds/seimaisin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Despite what he thinks, Daniel isn't really alone on the holiday.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghosts of Christmas, Past and Present

Soft snowflakes fell all over Colorado Springs. The streets were mostly quiet – at this time on Christmas Eve, most people were indoors, at home, celebrating the holiday with loved ones. Most people were getting ready for bed, kissing spouses and children good night, dreaming of the gifts and camaraderie that would come with the morning.

Daniel Jackson, as usual, was not most people.

He drove aimlessly through residential streets, listening to the DJs on talk radio announce pretend Santa sightings on satellite. Windows glowed warmly in the houses he passed; if he turned his head, he could see a lighted Christmas tree here, a woman hanging stockings on a mantle there. In one yard, a mini-snowman stood guard, making Daniel smile. Obviously, a child had been awaiting this first snowfall. Across the street from the snowman, a man sat on his front porch, smoking a cigarette. Daniel began to feel a kinship with him – there, here was another person in this godforsaken city who had no one – but, then, as Daniel’s car passed, a woman emerged from the house and patted the man on the shoulder.

This, then, was his fate, Daniel supposed – to return to his own planet, only to feel the same emptiness he thought he’d abandoned over a year earlier. His only family – his team, SG1 – was all gone, celebrating the holiday with their blood relations. Jack had surprised them all the week before by announcing he was heading for Minnesota for the holiday. His sister, who he rarely mentioned (to the point where Daniel had nearly forgotten she existed), had offered to bury whatever hatchet had come between them years earlier, so Jack had gone to meet a pair of newborn twin grand-nephews. Teal’c, for his part, headed through the Gate to spend some time with his son; it might not be his holiday, but the Jaffa appreciated a holiday that purported to be about family and loyalty.

And then, there was Sam. She’d outlined her plans in a bright, cheerful monologue the week earlier, as they sat in Daniel’s office. Her brother’s family was coming to visit; they were going to spend Christmas Eve at her house. “I’m imagining a sleepover,” she said, popping M&Ms into her mouth. “We’ll bake cookies and watch It’s A Wonderful Life until we thoroughly annoy Mark. Then, when the girls go to sleep, I get to help play Santa Claus and lay the gifts out under the tree.”

She fairly glowed at the thought. Daniel glowed with her, for her enthusiasm. He’d gone shopping with ‘Aunt Sam’, mostly to play packhorse for the piles of bags she emerged from the mall with. No doubt, the young Carter girls were going to score more loot than any other child in the state of Colorado, if their father had gone to even half the trouble their aunt did.

This was a Sam that Daniel didn’t remember – or, maybe he’d just never paid that much attention before? He saw the domestic light in her eye, the not-quite-hidden part of her that yearned for a normal life. None of them would ever have a simple family life, Daniel knew. He didn’t mind, for himself. It wasn’t as if he’d ever really had a normal family life. Jack had made his peace with the loss of his family life a long time ago. But Sam was different. Underneath the soldier and scientist lurked the heart of the most caring woman Daniel had ever met. Neither the Air Force nor the Stargate program had stripped that away – yet – as hard as it tried. She had her family, her brother and her nieces, to ground her, to remind her that there was something else out there. Something she might never get to have for herself.

There had been a strange light in Sam’s eyes that day, as she told Daniel of her Christmas plans. They’d worked in silence for a few minutes, and then she spoke unexpectedly. “Do you want to come?”

Daniel looked up over his glasses. “What? Where?”

“To Christmas. At my place.” When he merely blinked, she rushed on. “Come on, it will be fun. You can help us wrap presents … and, besides, Mark would be grateful for the extra testosterone in the house.”

Daniel’s refusal was automatic. “No, Sam, that’s a family thing. I don’t belong there.”

She’d looked hurt. Why had she looked hurt? The expression confused him. She had gathered up her paperwork and left the office with a flimsy excuse.

He thought of Sam as he drove through nameless subdivisions. He wondered how her Christmas Eve was. He looked at the dashboard clock, which read 11:30, and envisioned her chasing her nieces off to bed. Her hair would be disheveled, and her cheeks would be glowing from an evening of laughter. She’d kiss each of the girls good night, and then tuck them into bed and close the door. Daniel realized that he’d forgotten her nieces’ ages. Were they young enough that they still believed in Santa Claus? Or, were they teenagers, who would indulge their parents and aunt in the pretense that would leave stacks of boxes underneath the tree the next morning?

The concept of a ‘typical’ family Christmas was one that Daniel knew only from television specials and department store commercials. His own parents had been contentedly agnostic – the religious aspect of the holiday was a mere intellectual curiosity; the secular aspect, a travesty to ignore. Sure, they’d given him gifts, but young Daniel had grown up hearing about all the different cultural meanings behind the winter solstice. “Christmas” was just something that a young culture called it. After his parents died, however, he secretly wished for a piece of that simple holiday. The Christmases of his teenaged years were scattered affairs; a different foster family each year, a few token presents from people too overburdened with responsibility to take a real interest in him, or people who had no idea what to do with someone of his intelligence and intensity. At college, the end of December was merely a time to catch up on reading, when there was no one else on campus.

On Abydos, he’d celebrated one holiday that resembled Christmas; one morning, Sha’re had appeared in their tent bearing a bottle of an unnamed substance – ink, or something that passed for it, for him to use in place of his now-empty pen from Earth. The gesture touched him, and he wished for something to give her. Sha’re, however, insisted that his presence in her life was the greatest gift she could ever receive, and led him outside to a large feast without hearing any more protests.

Daniel’s chest tightened with a familiar ache. His wife’s face was still etched into his brain; however, the edges were softer, a little more forgiving than they were in years past. Sha’re was a constant presence in his soul, but the pain and guilt eased a little bit every time she surfaced. That, he figured, was her ongoing gift to him.

Suddenly, he realized that his car was parked outside of a building – a church, he noted as he looked up. He didn’t remember stopping. But, he remained in place, watching out the window as people poured into the church. A Catholic church, he decided, preparing for midnight mass. The stained glass windows cast a warm glow onto the sidewalk, and when he switched off the radio, Daniel could hear the soft strains of an organ playing ‘Silent Night.’ He stared at the entrance, and at the young priest greeting people as they entered. He and the Christian God weren’t exactly on the best of terms, he thought ruefully. Mostly, he’d inherited his parents’ skepticism towards organized religion; as a student of ancient culture, one learned how most of these establishments ended. However … the events of the past year had given Daniel a healthy respect for forces that seemed to operate outside of the realm of science. He’d landed here for a reason, he decided, and stepped out of his car.

The church smelled like incense and, surprisingly, cookies – he figured the latter for odors clinging to the cheerful people filling the pews. These were families, some with children out later than they were allowed to stay up at any other time of year, others simply couples, old enough to have grown children, sitting side-by-side and murmuring prayers to the large crucifix above the altar. Daniel took a seat in a pew near the back and rubbed the cold from his cheeks. A moment later, the organ’s volume swelled, and the service began.

Daniel’s mind wandered during the mass; he briefly regretted the fact that masses were no longer celebrated in the traditional Latin, because that language was more melodious and would have been easier for him to follow. As it was, the drone of the priest blended with the voices of the choir, and settled into a pleasant buzz in the back of his mind. Instead, he comforted himself with the image of Sha’re, sitting next to him in the pew and whispering questions in his ear. She would have loved this ritual, all the foreign-sounding words and the music, but especially the meaning behind the holiday. He would have squeezed her hand and murmured the story of the young couple in a barn, of the innocent woman who gave birth to a boy who would eventually ascend to another plane of being to save the world. Given all that had transpired before her death, Sha’re would have appreciated the sentiment.

He could almost feel her hand underneath his, but suddenly, when he turned his mental eye to gaze at her, the hand he held belonged to Sam. He could feel her eyes on him – a different color, but just as warm as Sha’re’s. The phantom Sam squeezed his hand and laid her head on his shoulder. Comfortable. This fantasy was too comfortable, just as right, in some ways, as imagining his wife sitting next to him.

Once again, he saw the hurt in Sam’s eyes as he rejected her invitation. A family thing, indeed. Daniel’s mind provided him with another image – of himself, sitting on Sam’s couch, watching Jimmy Stewart run through the streets, celebrating his own life. Sam was curled up next to him, melding her body with his and grabbing popcorn out of a bowl in his lap. The Christmas tree next to them was lit, multicolored bulbs providing a rosy glow over the room. The scene was more normal and domestic than he’d ever truly experienced, and at that moment, he craved it with every fiber of his being.

“You are loved, Daniel. You always have been.” The voice in his head still belonged to Sha’re, but he understood where she was compelling him. He stood up in the pew, causing a few heads to turn. Quietly, he excused himself from the service and exited the church.

Outside, he clicked his cell phone to life and pressed a button. To his relief, the voice that answered was bright – not dragged out of a sound sleep, as he’d feared. “Daniel!”

“Hi, Sam. Merry Christmas.”

“Oh, it is after midnight, isn’t it?” She laughed. “Merry Christmas to you, too.”

“Say …” Daniel paused. “Is your invitation still open? For tomorrow morning, I mean. I could bring breakfast or something.”

There was silence, during which Daniel nearly cursed himself, but when Sam spoke, the joy he heard nearly overwhelmed him. “The invitation is always open. And, screw tomorrow, if you’re up, come over now – we’re trying to assemble a pair of bikes, and we need all the help we can get!”

He laughed, and hung up (with a promise to stop at the doughnut shop on the way to her house). Before he got back into his car, however, he paused on the stairs of the church. He turned around, and caught a glimpse of the lighted nativity scene that graced the lawn next to him. Daniel inclined his head in the direction of the manger, which held a plastic doll wrapped in a pink flowered baby blanket. “Thanks,” he murmured.

The doll didn’t answer, and neither did Sha’re. That was all right – for the moment, Daniel’s heart held all the answers he needed.


End file.
